Nothing spices up one's sex life like having a partner.
If men of genius only knew what love their works inspire!
In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the 'epic' one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices.
Which of the two powers, Love or Music, can elevate man to the sublimest heights?. . . It is a problem, and yet it seems to me that this is the answer: 'Love can give no idea of music; music can give an idea of love. '. . . Why separate them? They are two wings of the soul.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. (Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves. )
It is difficult to put into words what I suffered-the longing that seemed to be tearing my heart out by the roots, the dreadful sense of being alone in an empty universe, the agonies that thrilled through me as if the blood were running ice-cold through my veins, the disgust with living, the impossibility of dying. Shakespeare himself never described this torture; but he counts it, in Hamlet, among the terrible of all the evils of existence. I had stopped composing; my mind seemed to become feebler as my feelings grew more intense. I did nothing. One power was left to me-to suffer.
It is so rare. . . to find a complete person, with a soul, a heart and an imagination; so rare for characters as ardent and restless as ours to meet and to be matched together, that I hardly know how to tell you what happiness it gives me to know you.
Do not look down upon any Muslim, for even the most inferior believer is great in the eyes of God.
I don't have the power to issue papal decrees.
Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
On occasions, after drinking a pint of beer at luncheon, there would be a flow into my mind with sudden and unaccountable emotion, sometimes a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza, accompanied, not preceded by a vague notion of the poem which they were destined to form a part of. . . . I say bubble up because, so far as I could make out, the source of the suggestions thus proffered to the brain was the pit of the stomach.